by John Shirley
“I didn’t think about it till I got here, and saw who was assigned to be the riders in the cars,” Bullock said. “You know--we weren’t the original people chosen for this. Nope. One was Bill Gates. Another was the Secretary of Transportation. Couple of other guys. Right before the invitation went out to those people--it was changed. Making it us and O’Mara and Monteleone.”
“How do you know this?”
“I noticed Verrick treating me differently. Kind of subtle but it was there. He’s gotten all that bad PR from the leaked file, having to deny all that stuff...Maybe it just put him in a paranoid, defensive mood...Then I heard that he’d put me on this exclusive list--I thought it was his way of showing things were all right with me. But when I saw you and the other three, and remembered that none of us were on the original list...”
Morrison swallowed. “You think...something’s up?”
“I think we’re going too damned fast.”
The ghost that was driving the car was apparently a lunatic--the car was now shrieking along, passing the other cars on the freeway. There was a news helicopter overhead. Bullock could hear its blades chopping away. Maybe the reporters up there would tell the cops these cars were malfunctioning. But what could the cops do about it?
Bullock got out his cell phone and dialed 911. And...nothing. It just made a buzzing sound in his ear.
The car went faster--Bullock looked up at the speedometer. It was on 90 miles an hour. The car up ahead was going even faster--then suddenly it seemed to pull away. He looked at the speedometer. The car they were in was slowing..
“There’s one car keeping up with us,” Morrison said, pointing. “Who the hell is that guy?”
Bullock looked to their left--a copper-colored Acura MDX was just managing to keep up with them. The driver was waving a phone at them.
Lean, scruffy looking guy in an old Army coat. But maybe he was on the testing team somehow. Some badly dressed engineer...
The car continued to slow. Bullock’s phone chimed and he answered. “Hello?”
“Listen, it’s me, in the car next to you...” He waved, glanced at the road to keep himself in his loan, then looked back at Bullock. “I’ve hacked into their control signal and that’s given me access to your phone too, but not for long. I can’t seem to keep the signal up consistently. They’ve got theirs coming from a stronger transmitter maybe.”
“They?”
“Verrick and Van Ness! They’re trying to kill the two of you. Maybe the guys in the other car too...I’m not sure exactly how they’re going to do it...”
Bullock felt a deep, shimmering chill go through him. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Wolfe.”
“You’re the one who slowed us down?”
“Me, no, I just noticed that...”
The buzzing sound came back and the man’s voice went away.
“Bullock,” Morrison said, a catch in his voice, “look--the other car’s taking an exit...”
The other self-driving car was driving off at the exit ramp, far ahead. Very rapidly. While their own self driving car had slowed down to well under the speed limit. Cars with human drivers were honking behind them.
“Well, maybe we’ll take that exit, maybe this is over. God, I hope so...”
Maybe Wolfe was a lunatic. He looked a little crazed. Maybe Verrick wasn’t...
Then they saw the other car, up ahead, doing a wild, rapid three point turn on the overpass, turning around, driving back along the ramp it’d just existed...going the wrong way on the ramp.
And now the other self-driving car was once more driving on the freeway, in the opposite direction--against the flow of traffic.
The other self-driving car was coming right toward them. It was less than an eighth-mile off. Cars screeched and honked around it.
Bullock could see O’Mara sticking his head out the window calling for help.
Lot of good that’d do....
Their own car was going faster, once more. The speedometer read 50, 60, 70...80...
“Bullock!” Morrison was almost sobbing. He was grabbing the back of the seat in front of him, knuckles white. “It’s coming right at us! It’s going to hit us! It’s going to hit us head on!”
Bullock unbuckled his seat belt, and half climbed over the seat in front of him, so he could reach the steering wheel. He tried to turn it, not too sharply, so it’d go onto the shoulder.
It resisted his grip. It turned the other way, staying in the lane, the “ghost” far too strong for him. And it was still accelerating.
“The brake, Bullock!” Morrison shrieked. “Climb over and hit the break!”
Bullock saw the emergency brake, pulled it--and the car squealed, and spun around, out of control. Car screeched around them, horns honked. He heard a siren somewhere.
Bullock felt himself catapulted up front. The side of his head cracked into the steering wheel. He got up, sitting up in the front seat--just in time to see the car straighten itself out. The emergency brake popped out of activation position and the self driving car headed right for the other suicidally robotic vehicle.
The two self-driving cars were a few seconds from collision. Bullock could see the terrified faces of O’Mara and Monteleone.
“Bullock!” Morrison shrieked. “Do something!”
Then a beeping sounded from the blinking self-steering indicator on the dashboard. The words Automatic Driving Signal Interrupted flowed digitally by on the small billboard screen...
Their self-driving car veered, suddenly, to the right, bumping onto the road shoulder. It bounced, swerved, fishtailed...and slowed. Then it came to a sudden stop.
Heart pounding, Bullock turned to look out the back window--just in time to see the other self-driving car driving headfirst into the very large flat silver grill of an enormous semi truck.
The self-driving car crumpled, flew to bits, flame spouting up around the semi-truck which went swerving into the left hand shoulder...it piled into the freeway divider, ripping up great swaths of white metal and then stopping about seventy feet from Bullock. But other cars were swerving, losing control, spinning...
“Oh God,” Bullock said.
Morrison was jumping out of the car, running wildly, shouting, stumbling....
“Morrison, no!” Bullock shouted.
But that’s when a 1990s era station wagon, screaming out of control, slammed into Morrison, and dragged him under it, past the remaining self driving car.
The other cars were moving on, past the wreckage, or pulling over. The prototype car seemed to stall, then.
Bullock decided it was safe to get out. He felt dizzy as he clambered across the front seat, opened the door, got out of the car, and stumbled toward the ditch on the other side of the shoulder. The wind off the lake stung his nose. He liked the feel of it. It seemed to calm him a little...
Morrison was dead. O’Mara was dead. Monteleone was dead...
Bullock heard a whirring sound, turned, and saw the self-driving car’s lights coming on. That ghostly steering wheel was turning once more. It was turning toward him.
The car was going to come after him, now. It was going to finish what it had started.
Then another vehicle was coming--backing up along the road shoulder. It was the coppery Acura. It kept going, honking...and he realized the driver wanted him to get out of the way.
Bullock turned and jumped into the ditch. The Acura was a blur in his peripheral vision. He heard a loud metallic crack, looked up to see the Acura, more than double the size of Blume’s prototype, smashing its rear end into it, crushing the self-driving car’s front end and forcing it into the freeway.
The Acura then drove forward, pulling up close to Bullock...and its engine died. The driver of the Acura tried to restart it. But it only whined. Crashing into the now-defunct self-driving car had damaged the Acura too.
The driver got out, ran around the front of the car to Bullock. It was the man who’d called himself Wolfe. He was looking aro
und, with an air of urgency that was just short of desperation.
“Did...did you stop the car I was in, somehow?” Bullock asked.
“Yes. Couldn’t keep control of it though. And now the car I was in is stopped too. And that’s not part of my plan.” Police cars were arriving, beyond the crashed semitruck. The truck driver was getting out, unhurt, shouting to the police. “They’ll be here in a second. Do you think you can make it over that fence, Bullock?”
Bullock turned--and saw a hurricane fence about twenty five feet high.
“I...don’t know. Doubt it. I don’t want to go over it. Want the police. They’ll be here in a minute...”
“Look, you can’t trust the cops, Purity has friends in the department. Verrick wants you dead! You’ve got to...”
Then another car weaved past the ones pulled up behind the wreckage, and drove up to them. It pulled up sharply. It was a Toyota Camry. A young woman was behind the wheel.
“Wolfe! Get in!”
“Seline! What are you doing here?”
“I came to get your ass out of this mess! Get the hell in the car, Wolfe! Him too if you want!”
Wolfe opened the back door of the Camry, and Bullock felt himself shoved headfirst partway into the vehicle. “Get in, Bullock!” Wolfe said. “Or I’ll kick your head in! Get in the car!”
Bullock climbed the rest of the way in, Wolfe got in with him, and hadn’t quite closed the door before the Camry raced off down the road.
More sirens were warbling up from behind.
“With any luck, they’ll be too busy with this mess to follow us,” the woman said.
Wolfe looked at her. “What the Hell? Where’d you get this car? You hot wire it?”
“No! I’m not like you, Wolfe! I rented it! Hello, it’s called a credit card!”
“Oh. But...Seline...How’d you find me?”
“Never mind.”
“You followed me!”
She was silent for a moment. Then she shrugged. “So what? How’d we first meet? You were following me!”
“Yeah but...this is more like stalking.”
“You better be kidding or you can get out right here.”
Wolfe laughed. “I was. Sort of.”
The woman took the exit, and drove off, fast as she could, taking turns frequently...
“The cameras,” Seline said. “They going to track us...?”
“Got my phone set to blur them as we get close. Where we going?”
“The safehouse.”
“Can I get out here?” Bullock asked.
“No,” Seline said.
“Could you turn me over to the police?”
“No,” she said.
“I’m going with you two?”
“Yes,” she said.
Bullock leaned back on the seat. He felt like he was going to faint.
He buckled his seat belt, and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Sir?”
“Yes, Starling, just report.”
“Is this line secure, sir?”
“Yes, yes,” Verrick said impatiently. He was in his penthouse apartment, now, in his bathrobe, smoking a cigar and looking out at the lights coming on as dusk sank into night. He was trying to focus on the cigar and not think about Oxycontin. Needed to keep his head clear. “Wait--why are you asking me that? This is your goddamn system! You tell me if it’s secure!”
“Sir yes sir, I just meant--”
“Never mind what you meant! Did the cars get them or not?”
“We’re sure of three of them, sir. The cars are wrecked, and O’Mara, Monteleone, and Morrison are dead.”
“And Bullock?”
“Sir, we haven’t got a definite report on him, sir. His body has not turned up, sir. But there’s a lot of chaos out there, sir.”
Starling’s sir tic was getting on his nerves but he let it go. “Don’t make excuses about chaos, Starling--find Bullock!”
“Sir, yes sir. I have discovered that there was a car stolen in the area. I suspect its remote ignition was hacked...”
“Wolfe?”
“I think so. It was found wrecked on the same highway. No sign of the driver...”
“Dammit! He could have Bullock! Wait--what about ctOS surveillance in the area where Bullock disappeared?”
“Checked it sir. Cameras were blotted out in the area, remotely. Sir I believe that could be the work of Aiden Pearce.”
“Pearce! Another man who has to go down! Starling...find Bullock! Pull out the stops! Do whatever’s necessary! We’re close to go time for Iceberg!” Verrick turned from the window, walked to his desk, stubbed out the cigar in a glass ashtray. “And about go-time--how many drones do we have operational? They destroyed four at the last encounter...”
“We have six drones, sir. More than enough. If anything--you might, sir, consider moving the timetable ahead...”
That was a possibility Verrick had been considering. “I might. Especially if we don’t locate Bullock...”
“Sir, we’ll find him, sir!”
“We’d better--before they find the Iceberg Project.”
“There is something we can do, sir, if we can even get close to Bullock. I’ve been researching him, since he went missing. Sir, did you know he has diabetes?”
“Yeah, he developed it in the last year. Adult onset, some kind of genetic deal, what about it?”
“You know he has an implant device for delivering insulin, sir? That presents possibilities...”
“Fine, but we’ve got to find him first.”
“Sir--is there anyone else in Blume who knows what’s planned? Anyone else we need to...”
“No. No, the Board of Directors at Blume is made up of a bunch of moderates or the wrong kind of conservative--the old school kind that doesn’t have the balls to face the real enemy. Low-down compromisers! And Blume developed ctOS! Think of the power in ctOS--and they’ve barely scratched the surface of it. There are plans to get ctOS going in a lot of cities around the globe, Starling. If the right people controlled that system they could shape the world if they wanted to! Well, they won’t go in that direction. I’ve tested the water with them. They can’t deal with that hot water, Starling. But if they won’t use it to change the world, I will!”
“Sir yes sir! We’ll do it together, sir!”
“Just take care of--” He broke off, listening. The doorman was ringing from downstairs. “I’ve got to go.”
Verrick went to the door and touched the intercom button. “Yeah?”
A nasal voice on the intercom said, “Mr.Verrick, I have a Mr. Quinn here to see you? A Mr. Niall Quinn?”
Quinn? The son of Lucky Quinn. The guy hadn’t made an appointment. He might be the new head of the Club, replacing his old man, but he wasn’t some kind of boss over Verrick and he couldn’t just bust in here anytime he wanted. Still, Verrick was curious about the visit--and he doubted Quinn was here to do him harm. He would never come in person to do that. “Okay, send him up.”
“There is actually another man with him, Mr. Verrick...”
That’d be his bodyguard. “Sure, fine, whatever.”
He opened his door and stuck his head out. His Graywater bodyguards were gawping at some video on a cell phone. “You two!” Verrick called, making them jump. “Stop pulling your puds and get in here! I’ve got a couple of plug uglies from the Irish mob coming up here! Call Three in here--he can watch the door.”
“Sure, boss, we were just--”
Verrick left the door and went to make himself a drink at the little glass bar across from his desk. The Graywaters came in, a young, blond, tanned mercenary and an Arab who used to work for a Saudi prince. They had their Mack 10s on straps over their shoulders.
“You two, leave the door ajar, get over here, stand on either side of the bar. Keep your weapons in your hands, safeties off, but keep them pointed at the floor. Unless you see someone jerk a gun on us.”
The mercs exchanged glances then went i
nto position.
Verrick mixed a brandy Alexander and when he’d just tasted it, someone knocked on frame of the door.
“Yeah it’s open, come in!” Verrick called.
Niall Quinn came in, followed by a beefy red faced man with red hair. Quinn had long wavy black hair, neatly clipped formed by some high priced barber, clipped just over his shoulders. He had thick black eyebrows, and freckles against pale skin. His lips were red, smirking; his eyes bright blue. He wore a long black double breasted coat, open now, to show a fine dove colored vest--and a gun in a holster, gun butt across his belly. He wore thin, gray leather gloves. His bodyguard closed the door behind them.
“So there he is, Roger Verrick,” said Niall Quinn. “Big shot at Blume, huh? I’m guessing anyhow you’re the one in the monogrammed bathrobe.” There was something mocking in the way Quinn said virtually everything. A barely disguised contempt.
“Good to meet you at last, Quinn,” Verrick said smoothly. “How about a drink? What’ll you take?”
“I look like I’m going to drink anything but Irish whiskey? I’m old school, Verrick.”
“Bushmills?”
“Sure, onna rocks.”
Verrick made the drink. His bodyguard, keeping a close eye on Verrick’s men, came over to get the drink. Verrick handed it to the bodyguard, and he took it to Quinn.
“Thanks, Colin,” Quinn said. He looked around. “You know, Verrick, been a while now since we had a deal. Your man Tranter came to me. Said you wanted some kind of help here and there around town. He’d pay. I said I wanted something else. Needed someone not connected with me to take out that son of a bitch Pearce. I just make it a policy--anytime I can get some asshole clocked out without my name attached, I do it. Degrees of separation and all that, you know?”
“Sure,” Verrick said. He noticed that Quinn hadn’t taken off his gloves or coat. That meant he wasn’t planning to stay long. Which could mean a couple of different things. One of them had to do with overseeing a hit.
Verrick glanced at the Arab, the brighter of his two guards, and raised his eyebrows. The man caught the look and nodded slightly. Understanding that Verrick wanted him to stay alert.